Marry Me

The rom-com, directed by Kat Coiro, is a clever twist on the very notion of stardom.

There’s real pathos in the contrived story of a star whose work and life have become inseparable, whose extreme awareness of her public image risks alienating her from her sense of inner selfhood. (It’s one of the movie’s flaws that Charlie’s life story plays a much larger role in the action than does Kat’s.) As the sham marriage develops into a real relationship, Kat takes an active part in the math teacher’s routine but fiercely principled daily exertions; what Charlie learns (the movie only suggests in action but hardly voices) is that Kat’s media world is a big business, a major enterprise that she has built from scratch. So he gamely plays along with the press conferences and TV talk shows and photo ops and the new life in the spotlight (including the ubiquitous presence of her personal video operator, played by Khalil Middleton, who’s recording her life for future commercial self-exploitation). The event is a dominant, fabricated phenomenon, the center of TV talk shows and entertainment journalism, and one man ignores it all: Charlie Gilbert (Wilson), a devoted math teacher in a Brooklyn middle school and a recent divorcé with a twelve-year-old daughter, Lou (Chloe Coleman). Charlie is disconnected from social media and unaware of who’s in and who’s out among celebrities. Parker, a big fan, has come equipped with a hand-drawn sign that says “Marry Me”; to take a cellphone video, she hands the sign to Charlie—and when Kat sees it, she says yes, calls Charlie to the stage, and marries him, a perfect stranger in dad pants and a windbreaker, in the glitzy and grandiose ceremony that was meant for her and Bastian. (Yes, he has misgivings, but he is caught up in the moment, urged on by Parker, Lou, and the whole chanting crowd.) But Charlie’s friend and colleague Parker (Sarah Silverman), a guidance counsellor, is tuned in, and, with three tickets in hand and two of them going unused, she invites Charlie and Lou to join her at the concert.

Now, “Marry Me” is not really pulling the curtain back on any dark secrets of celebrity, but it does play into Lopez's hopeless romantic persona within the ...

It breezes along thanks to its cast, including Sarah Silverman doing some heavy comedic lifting as Charlie’s co-worker; John Bradley, of “Game of Thrones” fame, who is a nice presence as Kat’s manager Collin; and Michelle Buteau as a very Hollywood assistant. Though she doesn’t know it when she picks him, thankfully for Kat, Charlie is just a nice single dad to a sweet 13-year-old with a cool Brooklyn loft, a dog and a job as a high school math teacher. Now, “Marry Me” is not really pulling the curtain back on any dark secrets of celebrity, but it does play into Lopez’s hopeless romantic persona within the confines of a PG-13 rating. Though it says something that she, as pop star Kat Valdez, is the most believable part of the whole endeavor, a glossy and better-than-average fantasy about the pros of arranged marriage. She might not always get the best material, but her rom-com charm is undeniable and even underrated 25 years after her breakout in “Selena.” The only time we as a culture seem to consider a performance of hers especially noteworthy is when she’s in something more “serious” (see: “Out of Sight,” “Hustlers”). It allows her to lean into her utterly singular experience as a very, very famous person within the construct of her best genre.

Jennifer Lopez stars in a romantic comedy, now in theaters and streaming on Peacock, that isn't a return to form so much as it is an attempt to tweak the ...

Instead, it aims to have things both ways, to have the glamour and the buoyant fantasy and to also be more textured in its treatment of its characters and their relationship. Her relationship with Bastian, too, is framed as a marriage of brands as much as it was going to be a marriage between two people, with the two of them having recorded a hit duet that goes on to nab Kat her first Grammy nomination. It’s one hell of a meet-cute, though the gentle pleasures of Marry Me have everything to do with what comes next. Marry Me refuses to be hard on Kat, even if it comes at the expense of laughs or dramatic tension. Charlie, who’s played by Wilson with a subdued aw-shucks charm, is a public-school teacher who coaches the mathletes club and goes to bed at 8 p.m. — to read, he offers in his defense when Kat pokes fun. Marry Me, the first of two nuptial-centered movies Jennifer Lopez is starring in this year, is a self-conscious resurrection of that faded format, complete with a real doozy of a contrivance.

Sometimes film reviews are hard to write. Especially, at least for me, reviews for films I don't have strong feelings about one way or another.

Of course, it’s not “just a bit,” and the rest of the film is a painful exercise in predictability as the two agree to keep up the façade for the press, then really get to know (and like) each other, then get torn apart by unexpected circumstances, then…well, you can see where this is going. There is much more that disappoints in Marry Me, not the least of which is its brazen and excessive product placement, from Kat doing an actual spot for the super-blender VitaMix at one point to only slightly more subtle references to “Hey, Google,” and more. Kat, a massive superstar, is set to marry her performing (and life) partner, Bastian (Maluma), in front of millions of people as a sort of promotional stunt (that’s also very real) for their new single, conveniently titled “Marry Me.” (The song itself is a catchy little ditty, perhaps the best thing about the film.) Just as she’s about to take the stage, Kat learns that rascal Bastian has been messing around with her assistant behind her back, and in a slow-motion reaction shot, we infer that this mogul, this Beyoncé-level (or, I suppose, JLo-level) megastar is human just like us, and her heart is broken. It gets worse, as she silences her band and calls for the house lights to be brought up so she can expound on the uncertainty of love, what does any of it matter anyway, might as well just marry somebody, right? Director Kat Coiro, who isn’t new to filmmaking, does her level best to make something out of the overworked script in a setting that feels like they spent most of their budget on casting JLo and designing her costumes. Indeed, that turn-of-the-millennium romantic comedy written by king of the genre Richard Curtis (who shares his throne with Queen Nancy Meyers) does everything Marry Me is trying to do and does it better and to far greater emotional effect.

In the past, rom-coms starring Jennifer Lopez often saddled her with professions that are just too unbelievable. “Maid in Manhattan”? “The Wedding Planner”?

Though the situation is far from realistic, the dynamically directed and swiftly paced “Marry Me” remains emotionally grounded, which is crucial to the execution. Massive superstar Kat is publicly humiliated at what’s supposed to be her wedding to Bastian, a huge concert at which they will perform their duet “Marry Me” before saying their vows. J.Lo plays huge concerts at Madison Square Garden wearing spangly unitards. Kat Valdez plays huge concerts at Madison Square Garden wearing spangly unitards. So it’s refreshing to see J.Lo, in a much-heralded return to the romantic comedy fold, playing a character who just makes sense for her: a global pop superstar. But it’s not just a professional life that Lopez shares with her character, Kat Valdez, in “Marry Me,” directed by Kat Coiro, based on a graphic novel by Bobby Crosby, and that’s a good thing.

(from left, center) Kat Valdez (Jennifer Lopez) and Charlie Gilbert (Owen Wilson) in Marry Me, directed by Kat Coiro. In some ways, it's a nice departure from her earlier roles that often completely divorced her from who she really is, including ...

It’s a movie that asks very little of you and only wants to make you feel a little bit nicer, a little bit fuzzier in return. Ads for the film have been touting it as “the return of the Queen of Rom-coms,” and honestly, even a diehard Meg Ryan fan like myself has to admit this is J.Lo in peak form. In Marry Me, her background isn’t the point, but it’s not erased, either, as it was in the particularly egregious case of The Wedding Planner (she plays an Italian for no discernible reason besides casual early aughts racism). Lopez stars as pop star Kat Valdez, whose new hit single, “Marry Me”, is a duet with her partner, fellow pop idol Bastian (Colombian pop star Maluma). The two are set to perform the song live immediately before exchanging their vows on stage in front of all their fans. In fact, it’s honestly not a whole lot stranger than some of the more off-the-wall romcoms of the chick flick heyday. There’s been a complete dearth of quality rom-coms in recent years, to the point that the bonkers premise for Marry Me probably has the casual viewer raising an eyebrow.